THE GLASS SHOE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11580, 19 February 1901, Page 3

THE GLASS SHOE.

In '89, when the incident occurred, I was confidential clerk to Wreck, Ivnitt and Co., fire insure..co assessors. One Monday morning Knitt came to me with a telegram asking us to take in hand a large fire that had occurred during the night. He wished to start by the next train, and could I be ready to go with him ? I could, and would. My little bag was always kept at the office ready packed, and I had only to sl.p in a couple of note-books and I was ready. We were accustomed to these sudden calls at short notice, my part in the expeditions being to take note of all details as Knitt ferreted them out, and, I may tell you, 1 was also keeping my eyes open to learn the ferreting-out process myself. We found the place completely gutted. What had been a line warehouse, rectangularly built around a central yard, was now smoking ruins, and the first glance told us that assessing the salvage would not be a difficult matter. Tho fire brigade were still at work, so we briefly interviewed the chief. He had formed no opinion as to the cause of the outbreak, but said the alarm was given about half-past two a.m., and that then the fire had a tjood hold. Probably it had originated about midnight in some room overlooking the yard, which would account for its having got such a hold before being noticed.

After arranging for tho ruins being photographed, we gave the local fire insurance agent a call. From hin> we learned that both building and business were owned by well, I'll call him Mr. Charles; mentioning names isn't business. He was at present away, having gone to Scotland on the Saturday for a few days' visit to some relatives, but a wire had been sent, and he was returning at once. Both building and contents ■were insured—fully, so the agent believed— the insurance being spread over a number of offices.

"And what sort of a man is Mr. Charles?" inquired Ivnitt.

"As straight as a die," said the agent; ho knew him well. He was universally respected, reputed wealthy, had filled various public offices, and so on. It would be a great shock to him : he took such an active part in the business, managing one large department himself. Four years, previously he had had a smaller fire when in other premises, but everything had been perfectly straightforward. After that lie had bought the present warehouse, where the business had l apidly grown, so that twice he had increased his insurance.

Next day we heard that Mi. Charles had returned, and forthwith waited upon him at his residence, The Cedars. We were shown into the library, where we were struck by the good taste displayed in the well-tilled shelves and in the choice bric-a-brac adorning the room. 1 was just admiring a beautifully-formed glass ornament, shaped much like a lady's high-heeled shoe, which stood 011 a cabinet, when Mr. Charles entered the room. Stout, with a ruddy, •well-fed face, a pleasant manner, and a sonorous voice, he was quite a typical alderman.

You've come to sec me about the fire, I I suppose ?" lie said, after the usual greet- i ings. " It's a terrible affair; it's made me ; feci quite ill." ! We both condoled with him, and Knitt ! remarked that it must necessarily upset the { business greatly for a time. The old boy j Tras about broken-hearted. It appeared he ! had no safe, and the books were burnt. And ! at his time of life, he said, he didn't feol like organising a business afresh. For some 1 time his wife had been wanting him to re- ' tire and go abroad lor th" ,-ake of his : health, and he had a good mind to sell the ; goodwill and do so row. ! Fortunately the private ledger hud been ; £:ept at homo, ard this book the merchant j placed at our disposal. For our assessment , purposes we sc in found that this would no i doubt be suffcient, as it was the closing! ledger of the full set of double-entry books kept, and, as they had always been care- ; fully kept and balanced, the figures in it : Douid be depended upon as being accurate. ' They were, in fact, the actual totals j "posted" from those books that were burnt, j including the stock-books, and covered the | three preceding completed years. This ! ledger had been kept by Mr. Charles him- j self personally and all the entries were in ' his own handwriting: the other books had j been kept by the book-keeper, but he, it 1 appeared, had recently left and gone abroad, j so that we could hope for no assistance fron\ him. j Mr. Charles' full claim had not then been | made out, but he kindly explained various : items in the ledger. Ha drew our attention ; to the steady increase of the stock to very 1 large dimensions, and to the consequent ex- j cess of purchases over sales each year. This j increase was mainly in his own department j —an expensive kind of silk fabric; and lie | explained that, owing to the steady and con- j tinuous rise in the price of these goods, by } buying well in advance he was making a 1 magnificent interest on the money invested, . in addition to the usual profit. And it was more particularly on account of these goods that the additional insurance had been placed on the stock. ' " Could we see his bank-book ?" Knitt inouired. That, unfortunately, was burnt too, but he could write a note asking his bankers to let us see his account in the bank ledgers; and he sat down at his writing-table to do so.

• He. signed and passed over the note, remarking, "By the way, we pay many accounts weekly in cash, taking extra discount, so you'll find the drawings on Saturdays heavy. These are not exclusively for wages." And we afterwards found that this Was so. The old gent was exceedingly chatty, explaining things and impressing upon lis details that really did not concern us in the least: but as soon as we could, without being rude, we excused ourselves and took our leave, he promising to send in his claim as early as possible. But I'm forgetting: there's one thing I must tell you. He pointed out the items appearing as "private drawings." These were : —

For the vear ending December 31. 1886, £416 do " do. 1887, £520 do. do. 1888, £624

All private bills were paid from the house, ho said, and he always drew level money everv Saturday. The first year he had drawn £8 a week; the second, £10: and the third, £12. And considering the increase in his business lie thought he was justified in these amounts, he added, inquiringly. Knitt assented, and the merchant went 011 to explain that the cash was always packed up : for him in an envelope when the men's ; wages were made up 011 Saturday mornings. During the next few days we interviewed several of the men, and continued our investigations in the usual way. Practically, I may say, the figures were in every way- : borne out by our inquiries. In three years . his bank balance had descended from over j £20,000 to an overdraft, thus bearing out : the corresponding increase in the stock and the excess of purchases over sales. The amounts of these latter tallied—very roughly speaking, of course—with the total amounts drawn from, and paid into, the bank each year; and a few words privately with the bank manager told us that he had been made aware of the cause of the diminution, and thus felt no uneasiness at the fact. We were also furnished with copy invoices represent- i ing purchases in the current year and such others as we wished. In fret, though there were slight differences to adjust, as of course is always the case, in a general way everything was fully substantiated, and, reduce the claim as we could, the total amount for building and contents wis not far from running into six figures.

The cause of the outbieak was sol clown "spontaneous combustion of oil}' waste." There was nothing to shov the absolute cause: the gas-meter was "off," and the premises were heated bv steam from an outside boiler. Nor could anyone be blamed, a.s, so far as could be made out, it must have originated in the stockroom of Mr. Charles' department—a room fronting the yardand no one had been in this room after he left at about ten o'clock 011 the Saturday ' morning, for after locking the door he had j in his hurry inadvertently put the key in his pocket, and never thought of it again till he reached Scotland. Everything was rightwhen he left, and it was impossible to con- . nect any carelessness of bis with a fire break- J ing out 38 or 40 hours later. The other ! rooms were vouched tor by the one who j locked up, and the keys had, as usual, been 1 left at the police station, so that no one | could have got even into the yard. The. night we finished the assessment was a. memorable one. Raining, b.owing, and chilly—a wretched nitrht even for November. While awaiting my 'bus I bought a paper, and the lad had some almanacs, too. and I 1 bought one. Why. I hardly know. I didn't j want an almanac, but the lad looked new at , the job, and had neither cap nor bootsand on such a night, too. " Whatever have you bought an almanac for?" exclaimed my wife, when she saw it; "we got any number pushed under the door." | _ ~ "Oh. I don't know. I felt sorry for toe lad." , T ' My wife did open her eyes, and then i re- 1 menibered orilv the night before I had told her she "shouldn't waste money like that, because she had bought some buttons that were no use from a lame man at the door. So I opened my paper. But a moment later I heard:

"Well! you have been done. It's an old one! '

I said, "No, it can't be!" But it wasit was foi 1887! Imagine my feelings— you can ! I looked "l my paper, and turned over the leaves of the _ " old ' almanac, pretending to find it all intensely interesting, but really blessing that dear boy, though I afterwards found he couldn't read, and had been done himself. But it was a good job for me that he had, for all of a sudden I noticed a fact that made me exclaim, "By Jove, that's funny!" "What's funny; buying old almanacs?" "No; I've got an idea." "Another? Well, they're new enough!" She'd scored again, but I was too excited to heed her thrusts. Something had made me wonde. if Mr. Charles' claim was as straight as it seemed, 'lrue, he had given us every information—too much, perhaps— but did that over-anxiety to make everything plain really mean something to hide? I thought of the French saying about self-ex-cusing being self-accusing, and the more I thought the more excited 1 felt. Next morning I was on my stool an hour before the usual time, poring over that ledger.' adding up columns and comparing balances.

"Mi. Knitt." I said, when he arrived, "I find that in '87 January 1 fell on a Saturday."

"Well, what of it?" I pointed to one line in (lie ledger. Ho looked; and a lonpr whistle escaped his lips. Then he said: "You'd better check over that ledger at once."

" I have. Mr. Knitt, this- morning, and there's nothing else."

And for a full minute he stood looking at me before he said :

" It's a most remarkable blunder . . . or a consummate swindle!"

A few hours later we again waited on Mr. Charles. He saluted us gaily: "Well, gentlemen, about finished your labours?"

Yes, Knitt thought we had, but wished to ask him about an item or two. We all drew up to the table, and presently Knitt came to the point : These private drawings, Mr. Charles— can there be any mistake?" " Mistake! No. how can there be?" he said, turning the book round and looking at the figures. "Fifty-two Saturday's at eight, four-sixteen ; fifty two at ten, five-twenty: fifty-two at twelve, six-twenty-four. That's right, isn't it?"

"Yes. yes. of course," replied Knitt, craftily: "but would the money be drawn regularly each Saturday?"

"(If course; it's put up with the wages. Why?"

" Because"and here Knitt leaned back in his chair and fixed his eyes searohingl.v 011 the other's face—"the year '87 had 53 Saturdays in it."

"How do you mean? It couldn't." "But it did. The first day and the last were both Saturdays."

Evidently the possibility of such a thing was a detail that had never entered his head. His first look had been one of incredulity. Now lie started and changed colour, and I saw his hand on the table twitch.

"Then one week's," lie began, slowly, as if casting about in his mind for the excuse that would best, carry water, "must have been"—ho gave a slight pause: I believe ho was going to say " forgotten." when the absurdity of the thing struck him, and he said—"paid on some other day." " That would have thrown 53 payments into '86 or '38."

"My book-keeper must have he was beginning, when Knitt, whose patience was exhausted, suddenly leaned forward and shouted:

" Don't belie an innocent man. This" — striking the open book with his fist at the' word--" this is a bogus lodger." "It's a lie." roared the merchant, dashing br.ck his chair and starting up with a flaming face.

Crash! The chaii had struck the cabinet and brought down the glass shoe—into a thousand pieces. The effect 011 the angry man when ho saw what it was was appallingmysteriously appalling. Had an angel appeared from.heaven and said" Guilty!" it could not have been greater. Starting back, with hands outstretched as if to ward off a blow, hi' cry rang through house. Then, like a flash, a change came over him. his face went purple. and in an instant he lay in a helpless heap. What was it? Apoplexy. He survived several days, but never spoke again. His wife was in a sad way. Not financially, though : though he had played a losing game. It- w..»s kent from tho public, but we found out that about half the cash drawn on Saturdays, instead of paying for goods, had been put on deposit in her name in a Scotcn bank —altogether about £30.000. This had been added in with the purchases and the stock, so as to make his claim that much bigger. Some of the copv invoices were "doctored' blank forms filled up to taste. No doubt his idea, was to draw the insurance, sell the goodwill and site, and go abroad —a profitable way of retiring. "It was a bold scheme, and it did me good, too. I found on my desk one morning a letter of thanks, and " hoping you will kindly accept tho enclosed, which has been subscribed bv the insurance companies concerned.*' " The enclosed was a cheque for £100. But what proved of greater importance to me was a change in the name _of our firm shortly after to Wreck, Knitt, Wright and Co. You see, my name s Wright. .OT,. Never found out how the fire started, But we" did. though. As conclusively as circumstantial evidence ever did prove a case. The men clearing away the debris one day brought me a glass shoe they had found— the fellow to the one that was smashed. A miracle it hadn't been melted or broken! The brass part of a lamp was cemented in the top. and the too was weighted. I experimented with it. The weighting balanced it so clcvevlv that, owing to the peculiar shape of the canity, •"'hen full of oil it would stand quite safely with the heel overhanging the edge of a table, but when the oil got low it overbalanced at once. Filled with oil and turned down very low, it burned just 38 hours before falling: so you vo only to imagine something combustible for it to fall on, "and—there you are.